Hi All,
I am pretty new to this website. I found this out through various referrals. I am currently a US citizen who lives in the Philippines. I am mainly teaching English online, and I would love to work as a developer remotely from where I am, to companies based in the US. What are some insights can you guys impart in this situation? No programming/coding work experience here. Thanks!
Hey there!
I am doing the same thing (i.e. I’m a US citizen in another country learning to code). I’m three months in to it all. Congrats on getting started with coding. It’s fun if you like solving problems. Here is my advice.
Code everyday (with rest days occasionally). I’m not sure if you speak a second language or not, but if you do, you know that it’s a “use it or lose it” skill. Same with programming. Practice everyday.
Pace yourself.
Code everyday (with rest days occasionally), but not so much that you burn out.
Get involved in forums.
Often times I see people saying “meet with other developers in person through meet-ups” with the idea being that you can network/maintain motivation to code. Being that you are abroad, this probably isn’t possible, and you will have a tendency to feel alone in your journey. This is normal. You can counter-act this by getting involved in online communities. At first it will seem intimidating, because you will think “what should I say?! I don’t even know what they’re talking about”. This is also normal. Just read, study, and eventually you find something you can contribute to.
Learn Git + GitHub ASAP.
Record EVERYTHING! Okay, maybe not everything. No potential employer cares about a “Hello World” program you created. But it’s good to track your progress and practice with Git/Github.
Limit the amount of courses you buy.
A lot of people over-buy courses. Don’t do this. Look for a couple good online courses if you want to buy a few, and use freeCodeCamp concurrently. I can tell you from experience that you will get WAY MORE out of completing projects on fcc, than from coding along in a course imho.
You will feel stupid.
This is also normal. I also came to terms with the fact that I am dumb as rocks. Coding takes time. If you think you are a stellar programmer after three months, then you are kidding yourself. You can know a lot, do a lot, and still suck. Don’t let your ego get in the way of learning things better and more efficiently.
Sleep-Workout-Eat.
This is silly that I’m even mentioning this. But I ran into this problem. Sometimes you get on a roll, really want to figure something out and forget to take care of yourself. You will code more efficiently and take in more info if you are healthy and get enough sleep.
That post was super long… but I hope you got something out of that.
Shoot me a PM if or post here if you have any other questions. I haven’t yet met any Americans abroad learning to code.
Take notes, work on your own projects or the ones from freeCodeCamp and code every day. 